Sharon Stone Nearly Died, Saw a Blinding White Light, and Was Told by Five Orbs Her Destiny Was To Stay Alive

Sharon Stone has never shared a conversation quite like this. The Basic Instinct and Casino star, bestselling author of The Beauty of Living Twice, artist, producer, and humanitarian opens up on Mayim Bialik's Breakdown about the extraordinary experiences that completely transformed how she sees life, consciousness, death, love, and the universe. She reveals the terrifying near death experience she had after suffering a devastating stroke and coma, traveling through a brilliant light, sensing deceased loved ones, and communicating with mysterious orbs that spoke in what she describes as a digital language. Sharon explains why she now believes the soul survives death, why we're not alone in the universe, why there are more than three dimensions, and why higher consciousness is something we can all access. She also recounts the mysterious physical attack that left her repeatedly struck in the chest over several days with absolutely no memory of what happened, being struck by lightning as a teenager, surviving an accident that nearly decapitated her while riding a horse, her thoughts on past lives, and why her father believed she was the reincarnation of an ancient pharaoh. Sharon shares why she believes high pattern recognition is a genuine form of psychic ability, how prayer feels like a vibrational frequency we can tune into, why energetic boundaries are essential, how she channels while painting, and how her stroke unexpectedly activated synesthesia and new parts of her brain. Sharon says she believes Mayim is her "soul contact" before giving her a spontaneous palm reading. She also tells the remarkable story of the famous psychic who once worked with Tina Turner and accurately predicted her career, life path, and that she would eventually meet the love of her life later in life. She opens up about her difficult recovery from her stroke after doctors believed she had less than 30 days to live, how she discovered that prognosis through a tabloid, the years she spent relearning how to read, rebuilding motor skills, getting off medication, and why she refused to accept that her story was over. Sharon reflects on the role that made her a global icon—Basic Instinct—explaining how it helped her discover her authentic self while also opening the door to darker people entering her life. She discusses why she enjoys playing psychologically complex and dark characters, why some actors unfairly earn the label of being "difficult," and why Hollywood often struggles to understand people who grew up outside its world. She also shares what it was like growing up in rural America, why being a highly precocious child with an exceptionally high IQ shaped her life, how her mother's traumatic childhood affected their family, why gratitude is one of the most powerful healing forces we have, and why our standards of beauty desperately need to evolve. The conversation explores why she never understood the backlash she received for speaking about the George W. Bush presidency, her deep friendship with Willie Nelson and how he helped her through one of the hardest periods of her life, and what her dating life looks like today, including why she's chosen celibacy. Sharon reveals why she absolutely loved The Big Bang Theory, why she wanted to appear on the show, and how her lifelong fascination with physics connects to her deepest beliefs about reality itself. This is a conversation about survival, consciousness, intuition, resilience, Hollywood, spirituality, science, healing, creativity, and discovering who you really are! For a limited time, get $250 off Cove Pure water filtration at http://www.covepure.com/breakdownEvery self-made person started somewhere. Yours starts free at https://www.shopify.com/breakdown. Go to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Visithttps://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN http://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN and get a FREE AG1 Flavor Sampler and a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3 + K2 in your Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order. Sharon Stone's memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice: https://a.co/d/0gfKkR4DSharon Stone's art: https://sharonstonestudio.com/ Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I nearly died. I was traveling very, very quickly up through this very bright white light. At the top of it, I saw some of my friends who had passed away. It was just so beautiful.

• 0:14Mayim Bialik?

  What you're describing is a near-death experience.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  These five orbs presented themselves to me, and they talked to me.

• 0:21Mayim Bialik?

  Had anything like this ever happened to you?

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Jesus, no. I don't know if I'm supposed to stay here or if I'm supposed to die. They said, "You're supposed to stay, but your destiny requires that we stay with you."

• 0:32Mayim Bialik?

  Were you scared? Humanitarian and award-winning actress Sharon Stone discusses her new book about her spiritual journey, channeling, and her near-death experience.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  When I had Basic Instinct, I was very young and inexperienced. I opened some dark doors. Dark people, dark things came into my life. Just because the devil's a very interesting person at the cocktail party doesn't mean you should give him a seat.

• 0:58Jonathan Cohen?

  It feels like you almost lost yourself for a moment.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Yes, but the light is what saved me. I'm really good at playing characters that lived because I can channel them. I have a belief in a higher power. Do I know what that is? No. That allows me to be open to finding, knowing, experiencing the what. Right now is the moment to tune into the higher consciousness. Give me your right hand.

• 1:28Mayim Bialik?

  Right now?

• 1:29Speaker 00

  And open your wrist.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Who's Elaine?

• 1:45Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Miami Alec.

• 1:46Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:47Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to Our Breakdown. We have an unbelievable episode for you today. Sharon Stone, internationally recognized actress, artist, producer, humanitarian, and New York Times bestselling author of "The Beauty of Living Twice," is with us today. But this is not just your run-of-the-mill celebrity interview. Oh, no. We go deep into psychic premonitions, a darkness that she feels attached to her after her fame from Basic Instinct, as well as things she's never shared before about her relationship with consciousness and with beings outside of this realm.

• 2:25Jonathan Cohen?

  She discusses multiple near-death experiences that she went through and a medical ordeal that will leave you speechless.

• 2:33Mayim Bialik?

  You know, Sharon has been in the press for a variety of reasons over the course of her career, but most recently, on the topic of her book, she's going to explore what it has been like for 25 years to be rebuilding her skills after a significant subarachoid hemorrhage and stroke, and the way that she had to fight to maintain her sanity in an incredibly insane medical situation, which spilled out to every part of her life and her career.

• 3:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Sharon also describes an interaction with a psychic when she was only 23 years old that laid out the future of her entire career, including the moment she finds herself in right now in her life, and why she feels so overly connected to Miami that she had to come here today.

• 3:23Mayim Bialik?

  Sharon's also going to talk to us so much about her incredible acting career, and good time to mention, she can be seen in the latest season of Euphoria on HBO Max, and she co-stars with Miami Alec's Breakdown friend, Marc Maron, in "In Memoriam," which recently premiered at Tribeca. So make sure to check both of those out, as well as sharonstonestudio.com. It's a really special episode. We cannot wait for you to hear this one. We're welcoming in person Sharon Stone. Welcome to The Breakdown.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Break it down. I just want to say before we get started, I'm such a fangirl of you that it's like, I have to like settle down.

• 4:03Mayim Bialik?

  What do you mean?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Oh, I just, I'm sorry.

• 4:06Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, that doesn't even feel normal.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  I have to get the craziness out. Okay.

• 4:11Mayim Bialik?

  What, are you a Beeches fan? You watch Big Bang Theory?

• 4:15Speaker 00

  No, I'm a physics fan.

• 4:17Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, that, well, you were a...

• 4:19Speaker 00

  I'm a crazy, I was at college at 15.

• 4:21Mayim Bialik?

  I was fascinated. I didn't know anything about you in this realm.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  You're a crazy, like, intellectual. I wanted to be on Big Bang Theory. And your asshole writer-director said to me, "What would you play? It's a show about physicists." And I was just like, because he couldn't see past my exterior to get that I had the fucking brain power to do it.

• 4:50Mayim Bialik?

  Well, first of all, plenty of us act smart, and we're not.

• 4:52Jonathan Cohen?

  You don't have to make up the physics to be a part of the show.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  I was just like, I wanted to knock his teeth out.

• 4:58Mayim Bialik?

  Well, okay, this is actually a fascinating place to start because, like, I'm 50. When I was growing up, you know, as an actress in my teens, in my 20s, like, you were it. You were it. You were the hottest, most, like, sharp, like, phenomenal, sexy, badass woman. Like, that was the portrait.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  That sexuality came from an intellectual place. Because, yeah, I was naked, but the reason, like, people still come to me, they came to me to talk to me about doing a sequel now, and sat down and said, you know, because she was a serial, she's a serial killer. And I was like, um, she killed one person? Like, what serial? Like, get a clue. This was not about the killing.

• 5:52Mayim Bialik?

  And honestly, I didn't know much about you, and as we were, you know, looking at Valerie's research that she did for this episode, like, I did not realize you had an entire other intellectual universe, and the fact that, like, because you looked the way you do, right?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  That, like, acting isn't, haven't even been my main thing in these recent years.

• 6:14Mayim Bialik?

  Not even your recent years, like, as a young person? Tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up, you, and your exceptional precociousness.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  And pencil tuckey.

• 6:23Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  And I grew up in this, in this town that was so small that, like, kids drove their tractors to school when they finished their chores. You know, we got our milk from the dairy in these, like, you know, three-foot-tall metal cans, and my mom grew the vegetables and fruit that we ate in the garden, and my dad hunted and fished for the things that we ate. And, you know, I would come home from school, and there would be a deer hanging on my swingset, you know, from the tree that my swing was in, and turkeys strung out on the clothesline. And they are gigantic, by the way.

• 7:02Mayim Bialik?

  That's just a Saturday night for us.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Right, you know, like, this is so, and then, so, when people started this, like, anti-fur campaign, and, like, these are the same people that were wearing Ugg boots and putting their makeup on with brushes made of, guess what, fur. Like, it was like, I was like, the absurdity of it all was not lost on me. You know, like, what do you think the sofa you're sitting on is strung together with?

• 7:33Mayim Bialik?

  So what were you like as a kid? Were you outdoorsy? Were you hunting? Like, was that your life?

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Well, sure, you know, we were thrown out of the house in the morning, and you came back, hello, at dark, when the lights came on, your parents put the lights on, and you drank water out of the hose. You know, it was not anything like, what people even remotely understand. And you crawled out the window to shovel the snow away from the front door so you could get out. You know, I don't think people have any comprehension of this life in TV land.

• 8:11Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  And so I find all of the way that people sort of behave kind of bordering on absurd. And so when I was behaving in the way that I was as a tiny child, my mother took me to the local courthouse to find out what was going on with her kid. And they gave me an IQ test and said, you know, "There's nothing wrong with your kid. She just has this really high IQ." Which is remarkable because the same thing happened to me with one of my kids. Because I adopted three children, and one of my kids was just screaming and spinning

• 8:53Speaker 00

  in his chair and could hear things from, but I would have to walk out the front door, walk out to the street, and walk down to the end of our street to think, what is my kid hearing? And I didn't understand what was going on with my kid.

• 9:09Mayim Bialik?

  Is that what it looked like for you as a kid? Like, were you sensing things?

• 9:13Speaker 00

  It looked like, you know, almost like a lot of psychic ability when really I was just highly observant. It's what they sort of call high-potential intellect, right? You know, where you're just like, you really see, like, you know? And you really sense and see a lot of things because you're really on the ball. And you learn to, you know, walk, talk, potty train, read, write, do everything really, really young, way before other kids. And then the school calls because you're teaching other kids to do these things, and you're making what they thought was a lot of trouble for the teacher.

• 9:55Mayim Bialik?

  You were treating kids cursive, is that right?

• 9:58Speaker 00

  I took you cursive and algebra and things that, you know, are, you know, nonexistent anymore. You know, foreign language like cursive.

• 10:10Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:11Mayim Bialik?

  What were your parents like? I mean, were both of them surprised that they had this child? What was it like for them?

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Well, my parents were both orphaned in their own ways. You know, my mother, because she was extraordinarily abused, she was taken out of her home and given to a family to be their housekeeper when she was nine during the Depression. And so she was abused some more, but what was considered better abuse, to be a child laborer. And then my father came from extraordinary wealth and a long line of royalty, which he never knew before he died, that he was a descendant of, he was Hugo Not. And so he was a descendant of King Hugh and Queen Nora, who founded France.

• 11:00Mayim Bialik?

  You found this out after he died?

• 11:02Speaker 00

  After he died, and all the princes and princesses of Burgundy, and he was actually Joseph William Stone III. But he never knew that. And they were wildcat oil drillers in Oil City, Pennsylvania. But the oil well blew and killed everybody. And the money was given to the oldest living male survivor, which was, of course, not his mother, who had, was, had the right to all the money because women didn't get anything. And so he was given away at four to live in people's barn stall. He and his brother and the, and his mother took her daughter and became a nurse in an insane asylum.

• 11:43Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  And so my dad was really on his own. And my dad went to work and raised money and bought that home back. And it was a somewhat dilapidated, but giant mansion, which I ended up going to and living in with my aunt and my grandmother on all of my school breaks, weekends, summers. I lived with these very eccentric women who did think they were quite to the manner born.

• 12:17Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  And grew up in this really eccentric way.

• 12:21Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, that sounds like its own entire book.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  You know, I really would like to write a book about it and them.

• 12:28Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  They were really something.

• 12:30Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and also just this notion that your dad came from royalty and how much of that is in your DNA, right?

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Well, my father was really an extraordinary gentleman. You know, he was the guy who pulled out the chair for my dad, mom at dinner every night and helped her on with her coat and stood up when she entered the room. And he just had this way about him. You know, we called him the legend because he was really, you couldn't swear in front of him, though my mother had a mouth like a Portuguese dock worker. You know, every other word was swearing.

• 13:03Mayim Bialik?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  So it was really pretty eccentric.

• 13:08Mayim Bialik?

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• 17:14Mayim Bialik?

  confident and refreshed.

• 17:17Mayim Bialik?

  So, growing up, you know, you have this exceptional mind. When did you realize that you operated differently in a way that made you feel like you had different dreams?

• 17:31Speaker 00

  When you say that, it really reminds me of, I don't remember, was maybe, I don't know, second grade or something, where they tell you, you have to memorize a poem and come to school? And everybody memorizes the, the poem about the tree. You know, a poem as lovely as a tree. And I remember, and I,

• 18:00Speaker 00

  I, I memorized every stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee.

• 18:07Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  And I got up in front of the class, and when I started, the teacher's face was so in shock. But by about the fifth stanza, she looked like she was gonna pass out.

• 18:21Mayim Bialik?

  Wow, it's a long one.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, they just, she just was so really, what the fuck is happening here?

• 18:30Mayim Bialik?

  You mentioned that some of the abilities you had seemed like they could have been interpreted as psychic. What, what did it look like? What did your knowledge feel like? Were you sensing things that were about to happen? What were you experiencing?

• 18:46Speaker 00

  I just have heightened observation. And, yes, I think, and, and, and an ability, I have high pattern recognition.

• 18:57Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  Really high pattern recognition.

• 19:01Mayim Bialik?

  Do you think that's what being psychic is? Or do you think there's an extra set of abilities? Like, I'm curious, because a lot of times, we speak to channelers, or we speak to mediums, and a lot of it is what you're describing.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  I think it's mostly high pattern recognition.

• 19:15Mayim Bialik?

  Interesting. Uh huh.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  I think that's the majority of what it is, is high pattern recognition.

• 19:20Jonathan Cohen?

  Do you believe that people can know information without having seen the pattern? Meaning, like, that information is just available in a field that can be tapped into?

• 19:30Speaker 00

  I think this is why I'm so, such a fangirl about people who are physicists and people who are involved in physics. I think, you know, I, I saw someone on Instagram say that they thought that

• 19:45Speaker 00

  religion, spirituality, mysticism, witchcraft, you know, all of these things, the field, that it was all the same. And I wonder what you think about that.

• 20:03Mayim Bialik?

  We're big fans of this kind of notion of really trying to not find the scientific explanation for things that don't have science, but what if we're all describing the same thing in different ways?

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Yes, this is what I also wonder. And when we, I just watched the new Steven Spielberg movie. And I think that when people imagine that we are the only life form, and it's like really being a flat-earther to me. It's like, really? It's such an ego trip to me to imagine that we're the only life form, or that we're the superior life form, even on our planet. I think that's so, such arrogance. And it's hurtful. And I think it's so limiting. And I think it limits our understanding, and it limits

• 20:57Speaker 00

  our ability to hear and see and know if we do that. I think it's, it's hurtful, both intellectually and emotionally and psychically. I think we're limiting ourselves so much to not hear and, and be grateful to all things. I think we have to be grateful to, it, it, it's gonna sound really crazy to many people, but even be grateful to this table for becoming a table.

• 21:38Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  But this, this wood, this tree became this table. I am really deeply grateful to such an emotional level that I, that I know people will think that I'm nuts. But I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful to each and everything at a level that I just don't think.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  That people really get it. And I, it, it is profoundly lazy to me.

• 22:14Mayim Bialik?

  I have to tell you, the fact that you're like a fan of the Big Bang Theory, like, it blows my mind because it's so hard for me to separate all the things that I've thought I knew about you, right? From the person that you are underneath. And like, learning all these things, like, in terms of your health challenges, did that inform some of this gratitude in a new way?

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Well, let me tell you. What happened to me was so intensely violent. I was attacked over a couple of days. But it was a kind of attack that had been happening to me over several years. And I was trying to love this away. I was trying to become so expansive that I could stop this with love.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  And for some reason, the love was making it worse. And it took me a long time to recognize and to learn. And I'm a Buddhist, right? And so Buddhism is, is not a religion. It's a philosophy. So it does not exclude being spiritual, which I also really, really am.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  I have a belief in a higher power. And do I know what that is? No.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  And I'm also really kind of glad that I don't know what it is. Because that allows me to be open to finding, knowing, experiencing the what. To knowing that it could be this table. It could be the air that we breathe. It could be the water. It could be the octopus in the octopus movie, which I found incredibly moving as well.

• 24:18Mayim Bialik?

  Totally, yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  I am open to all things communicating to me and explaining it to me. Not just a thing or a prescribed thing. But I am also open to everybody's thing being a part of that thing. And honoring all those things that people give their love to. Because I do believe that love is the language with which we will find it.

• 24:47Jonathan Cohen?

  There's also a lot of hard science now on having that element of awe and wonder that you described and appreciation. Because gratitude, for me, is almost too simple.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Agreed.

• 24:59Jonathan Cohen?

  That, to be moved in that way is to be animated and to have emotion, which is to have the core essence of energy of our life moving through us. And so many of us have been muted, right? Like, we don't feel anything anymore.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:16Jonathan Cohen?

  Because we don't have that wonder.

• 25:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:18Jonathan Cohen?

  We don't have that appreciation for anything. It's not like we, we think we're so analytical, well, this table was engineered in this particular way, versus like, all the pieces that had to come together and the wood and the material that grew for however long before it got transferred into this. Like, that's pretty awesome.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  And all the trees that talk to each other in the forest, in the way that they do, in the way that they lean together and discuss with each other.

• 25:45Jonathan Cohen?

  And this one had to be removed. And where, where did that leave the other ones? Their friend left the forest to come here.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  And to be part of this discussion today, right? And to open itself so that we might get whatever information they talked about, might come into this awe-inspiring conversation. And might tell me, oh, today's the day you're going to tell them what happened after your stroke, right? Because I never told anybody this thing that I feel inclined to tell you now. Which is that, I, when I was in and out of a coma in the hospital, right? All these things happened. And I had 1% to 5% chance of surviving. No one thought that I would live. And then, of course, no one thought I would recover, right?

• 26:37Speaker 00

  And I have varying states of recovery. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not great, right? Sometimes I have good times, sometimes I have hard times. I was on medication for 25 years. I decided that I was going to go off the medication in this last eight months. I came off two of the medications that I was on. I decided, that's enough of that. I'm going to see if I can be without those last two medications. I came out of the hospital, I was on about 16 medications. And over the years, I got off a variety of these medications. And I was able to do it.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  These last two, it's been brutal. And, and people told me, you can't, you can't do it, you can't do it, you can't get off those, you're not going to get off those. And I was like, you know, I am. And it's been a brutal journey. Brutal, difficult, painful, physically violent. But I've done it, and I'm doing it.

• 27:50Jonathan Cohen?

  What do you attribute that to? Like, do you feel like you've been able to do something to help overcome those odds?

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Two of my three, three children are sober children. And I made a decision that I would see if I could be sober from prescription medication. And what that would be like. And is that possible? And is that possible in a world that's driven by pharmaceutical companies? And is that possible in recovery from serious illness? And after, when I came home from the hospital, I read in People Magazine that I wouldn't know for a month if I was going to live.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  That there was a month after the kind of surgery that I had that was unsteady and unstable and where people wouldn't know if they would live or die.

• 28:48Mayim Bialik?

  You read about it in People Magazine?

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, because one of the doctors that I fired was a complete asshole. And he thought it was terrific to discuss my case with People Magazine because he wanted to be famous and he wanted to be important.

• 29:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Is that not a HIPAA violation?

• 29:07Speaker 00

  He's, you know, I think we all know that homeless people and famous people get the worst medical care of everyone.

• 29:15Mayim Bialik?

  Sorry. Sharon Stone, that's amazing. I've never heard anyone say that.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  And women get treated just terribly. I mean, tampons were used on human blood this year for the first time. Hormones, female hormones were tested on men because they got a more consistent response. I mean, the way that medic, medicine has been tested on women is just atrocious. And I work in medicine. That is what I do. I work on healthcare and healthcare for women and children and housing and care for women and children. I have spent the majority of my adult life doing just that.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  That is how I won a Nobel Peace Summit Award, the Einstein Award, all these bazillions of awards that I have been given in my lifetime for that work. You know, this is the work I really have dedicated myself to profoundly and around the world.

• 30:22Mayim Bialik?

  Can you give us a framework so people can understand what happened? You had a subarachoid hemorrhage, correct? The attack was before then, correct?

• 30:31Speaker 00

  I was continually being hit in the chest and shoved into closets. And the day before this happened, I was hit in the chest a lot. And I didn't really understand what had happened to me until 10 years later. When I went to a clinic in Santa Monica, because I was having a lot of problems with my neck and shoulders. And I thought it was arthritis. Because my family has, my sister has lupus. And my father had celiac disease. And so, and that's a genetic issue.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  And so, we all had rheumatoid arthritis and all this other stuff. And mine's controlled to like zero because I'm disciplined like, like a soldier. You know, I have an extraordinary sense of discipline. So, but I, so I thought, well, maybe it's arthritis. You know, I need to go to this by neck and spine institute. And I went there and they were going to give me injections. And they'd done all of this scans of my front and my back. And they had put me under propofol. And they were coming in and they were going to do these injections. And, and they came in and said, look, we can't do this. Because it's clear that you were attacked and it's a felony.

• 31:55Mayim Bialik?

  You mean, you had damage that was evident as an injury?

• 31:59Speaker 00

  My whole thoracic rib cage had been fractured and scarred and was together inappropriately. And they were like, look, we have to report this.

• 32:09Mayim Bialik?

  And this was 10 years after?

• 32:11Speaker 00

  10 years later.

• 32:12Mayim Bialik?

  The incident that you, wow.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Because I did not know how this happened to me. I did not know how I'd ended up over the sofa, with one sofa one way, one the other way, the coffee table one way. Everything that was on the coffee table all over the floor.

• 32:27Mayim Bialik?

  So you woke up to what appeared to be an attack of some sort, but you had no memory?

• 32:33Speaker 00

  No idea of what had happened to me.

• 32:35Mayim Bialik?

  And they never figured it out? And then this happened 10 years later?

• 32:38Speaker 00

  And no one investigated and no one asked me and no one, everyone just said, you know, she's crazy. And my ex-husband said, she's an alcoholic and a drug addict. And he was the editor of a newspaper. And he took me to court seven times to get custody of my child and tons of child support and to break me financially and to ruin my career. And everybody just believed it. And of course, I was never drinking because of the celiac. And I, you know, I never took drugs. Everyone knew that I was a decaf tea drinking, like, you know, hippie girl who occasionally smoked marijuana.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Like, there was, I was like, you know, this very straight shooter.

• 33:28Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  And a very disciplined, hardworking person. But my reputation was being destroyed. My money was being just gone.

• 33:39Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  And so, and I had no idea what was happening. And I was just trying to recover.

• 33:44Mayim Bialik?

  Were you in a relationship at the time with someone that might have hurt you that way? Like, do we have any idea?

• 33:49Speaker 00

  I was married to this guy who then divorced me and married his girlfriend, who was the Borders bookstore eras. And so, I had no, I did not know. And I was so fucked up.

• 34:07Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, so 10 years later, you're having this pain?

• 34:09Speaker 00

  I'm having this conversation. And the guy says to me, we can't do this because it is clear that you were attacked. Now, I had remembered being shoved into the closet the day before. I had remembered waking up on the floor in the middle of an incredibly violent ordeal. And the next day, this thing happened. And I woke up, called my husband. He kept hanging up on me. I said, I need an ambulance. I think I've had a stroke. And he just kept hanging up on me and didn't come home for days. And when he did come home, he wouldn't help me. Until finally, my best friend told him,

• 34:54Speaker 00

  if you don't take her to the hospital, I'm calling the police. And he called my gynecologist. And my gynecologist said, you will bring her here right now. This doctor said to me, you, we have evidence that you were attacked. And it's a felony and we have to report this. And we have to report it to the FBI and we have to report it to the police. And you have to tell us what happened. And I had a panic attack under propofol, which is not a good thing. And I started screaming like, I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. Don't make me know, don't make me know. And the nurse came in and they were like, we're going to help you.

• 35:33Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  And we're going to help you know. And they helped me know and they helped me understand. And so, what happened took me back. The specific thing I was going to tell you is that when I was first home from the hospital, I couldn't sleep at night and I was sleeping in the day. And when I was laying on the couch, sleeping and awake, these orbs sort of presented themselves to me. These five orbs presented themselves to me.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  And they sort of talked to me, but in a digital language.

• 36:20Mayim Bialik?

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• 37:05Mayim Bialik?

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• 37:50Mayim Bialik?

  It's completely risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Check the link in today's episode description to get started. Whoa, had anything like this ever happened to you?

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Jesus, no. And I've never told anybody this because how do you tell someone this, right?

• 38:05Mayim Bialik?

  Well, we'd like to think we're a safe place, but yeah.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  Right? And so, they just kept sort of downloading in these ones and twos. Ones and twos, ones and twos. And it was like, and I just kept saying to them, I don't know if I'm supposed to stay here or if I'm supposed to die. And they said, you're supposed to stay. And I said, I can only stay if two of you will stay with my son.

• 38:37Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Because I don't want him to be alone. And I think he's going to get taken from me.

• 38:42Mayim Bialik?

  Hmm, how old was he at the time?

• 38:45Speaker 00

  One. And sure enough, he was taken from me. And, and I said, we have to have an agreement that two of you will stay with him.

• 38:56Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  And protect him. And they agreed.

• 39:00Mayim Bialik?

  Whoa.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  And they said, but your destiny requires that we stay with you.

• 39:04Mayim Bialik?

  How long did this go on?

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Several days.

• 39:08Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  And that's, they just went.

• 39:12Mayim Bialik?

  Did they look like lights?

• 39:15Speaker 00

  They were just balls. Yes, of light, of sort of golden swirls. Of, I would say light, but like clips of light. Like clips of light. Like clips of moving, pulsing light.

• 39:39Mayim Bialik?

  Were you scared?

• 39:40Speaker 00

  No.

• 39:42Mayim Bialik?

  What was the feeling?

• 39:43Speaker 00

  I was curious. But very much at peace. I mean, you have to understand that I had this experience when I was first, finally got to the hospital. And I went in the MRI tube. I think that I might have died in the tube and come out.

• 40:04Mayim Bialik?

  This is not the stroke.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  This is when I first got to the hospital.

• 40:08Mayim Bialik?

  That's when we got it, okay, yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  And I came out of the tube. The doctor was standing over me. And no one was in the room, except my then-husband, who was standing far away from me. And the doctor was looking at me in a way that, you know, doctors don't look at you. And there were no nurses. And I looked at him and said, I'm dying, right? And he said, you're bleeding into your brain.

• 40:41Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Sorry.

• 40:45Mayim Bialik?

  No, please.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  And

• 40:50Speaker 00

  I said, I better call my mom. And my then husband said, I'll do it. And he said, no, you won't. You'll stay right there. He said, I'll do it. And he took his phone out and he called my mom. And I told her what was happening. And I said, I think I better call my best friend.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  And I told her what was happening. And she said, I'm on my way. And I said, I need you to run my house. She said, I will. Then I had that white light experience that everyone talks about.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  And I was traveling very, very quickly up through this very bright, very fast

• 41:39Speaker 00

  white light up. And at the top of it, I saw some of my friends who had passed away.

• 41:47Mayim Bialik?

  Oh.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  Looking at me, really beautiful. It was just so beautiful. And all of a sudden, I felt this kick in my chest that was so intense. Like, I grew up in a farm. It was like being kicked by a horse or a mule, you know? I don't know if you've ever, I don't know if you've ever been in a, well, that's really like, you, you, it happens. You know it. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, it's an unbelievable experience. And I was suddenly awake on the table. And the table, the gurney, felt like it was really high in the air, like abnormally very, very high.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  And

• 42:34Speaker 00

  I suddenly I didn't feel like I was myself. I felt like I was myself five or six years old. And that I had very long hair.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  Almost like a very, like Alice in Wonderland kind of experience.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  And the doctor said, what do you need? And again, he told my then ex-husband, don't touch her. Stay away from her.

• 43:03Mayim Bialik?

  So you were in and out of some sort of state. And what you're describing is a near death experience.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and I said, I have to pee. And he said, okay, okay, right?

• 43:17Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, I just feel you're so trapped, right? Like, this, everything you mentioned about your ex-husband, I'm just like, there's this dark, just awful feeling. And you're going through this process totally by yourself, navigating in and out of consciousness. Then when you come back, you don't even have someone who is like there by your side that you can tether to.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  No.

• 43:39Jonathan Cohen?

  So like, what are you coming back to? You're coming back to this like chaos room of not understanding what your physical reality is. It just sounds totally overwhelming.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  It was unbelievable. And I looked down and the floor seemed like it was so far away. And I remember trying to get down to the floor and I just thought, I'll just float down. I'll get down. Like, my little feet were like so far and I just kind of slipped down on the floor. And I, and he showed me down the hallway, the doctor who was so beautiful. He was so handsome. I would never forget how handsome he was. And I walked down the hall.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  And I remember that the doctor's eyes

• 44:23Speaker 00

  did no longer seem like regular eyes.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  They seemed

• 44:35Speaker 00

  almost vibratory and bright. Like like bright, like extra bright. Like he was imbued with a certain special brightness.

• 44:49Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Do you know what I mean? And I walked down the hall and I peed, but like, I peed like gallons. Like, I just peed and peed and peed and peed. It was very strange.

• 45:00Mayim Bialik?

  Which sometimes happens with near death experiences, I learned recently. Go, it's like a lymphatic release.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Like a lymphatic drain.

• 45:06Mayim Bialik?

  Literally like your body's like, nope.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it just went

• 45:10Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Right? And I came back.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  And he said, we're transferring you to another hospital where they deal with this sort of thing. And they put me on a gurney. They put me, I got back on the gurney and I passed out.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  And then I was being put into the ambulance. And I remember it was this Latino guy, this beautiful Latino kind of chubby faced guy.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  The gurney wheels hit the edge of the ambulance when they were putting me in and it woke me up. And I saw him at the end. This beautiful face, almost like a Mayan face. I saw him and for some reason, seeing him made me feel really safe. And I saw him with this, he was backlit in the sunlight. And that, I woke up when the gurney wheels hit the ambulance going in. I woke up for a second and saw him and passed out again. And then I woke up in neurological ICU.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  And my then ex-husband slid out from under my bed. And I felt it and I looked down. And I was like, what's going on? And I started ringing for the nurse. I was like, what is he doing under my bed? And they said, oh, he just wanted to be next to you. So we let him stay under your bed. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, he can't, he can't do that. And they never fully examined me, which was even, and he kept telling them that I was faking it.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  So they did, so first

• 47:07Speaker 00

  I woke up and I was being wheeled to exploratory brain surgery. He had signed me up for exploratory brain surgery without my knowledge or consent. And I woke up again because the gurney hit something on the floor.

• 47:26Mayim Bialik?

  Note to all the EMTs out there, please be gentle with the gurneys hitting things with the wheels.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  I was like, where are we going? And he said, oh, to the operating room. I'm like, for what? Exploratory brain surgery. I'm like, I did not sign up for that. Well, don't worry. It's all been taken care of. I'm like, stop. No, we can't stop or we will be late. And he would not stop. And so I stood up on the gurney with my hospital gown open, my ass in the breeze. And suddenly everyone came running. And nurses, orderlies, everybody, and this asshole doctor. And he had a fax in his hand.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  And he was screaming, you can't do that. I'm on the phone with People Magazine.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  And I was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, where am I going? What's happening? And, and the, the the poor young kid said, you're going to exploratory brain surgery. And I said, I, I'm not doing that. I didn't sign up for that. And the doctor said, yes, you did. I said, you did. And I'm on the phone with People Magazine. And I said, you can't do that. And he said, yes, I can. I'm your doctor. And I said, well, you're fired.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  And he said, you can't do that. And this head nurse saved my life. This like 50 year old head nurse, beautiful blonde woman came out. And she said, well, she just did, sir. She just did.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  And

• 49:10Speaker 00

  she said, take her back to her room.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  And I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for her. I'd be the Francis Farmer story.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Because he would have sawed off the top of my head while I was hemorrhaging into it from a subarachoid rupture.

• 49:28Mayim Bialik?

  So what ended up happening? How did they end up treating that?

• 49:32Speaker 00

  There was a neurological convention happening that week. And all of the neurologists were out of town at the convention. Which, surprise, I'm sure the head of the editor of the newspaper probably knew. And so, but that's just a guess on my part. So

• 49:55Speaker 00

  they said, well, there's no one here.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  But there are, I said, well, I want to know all the ways that this can be addressed. I want to know what is going on with me and I want to know what can happen. And they said, well, there's a new technique that's just been invented in Israel. And I had a very close relationship with Shimon Perez. And he was the guy who was, you know, creating all of this new funding and making all of this new stuff happen. And so I had a, I believed very strongly that that might be good. And because many of these new neurological techniques were coming out of Israel. And

• 50:45Speaker 00

  I said, well, I want to know about that. I want you to tell me about that. And they're like, well, you're hemorrhaging into your brain. And I said, well, if I wait one more day for someone to get back here, what, what are the percentages? What are the odds that I'll die, that I'll lose my ability to talk, think? And they said, we don't know. We can't give you these odds.

• 51:06Mayim Bialik?

  Well, you're a case of one.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Yes. And I'm like, well, I, I want to wait. I want you to get someone on a plane. I want you to get them back here right now. And there was this guy who had just become a brain surgeon.

• 51:25Speaker 00

  And he was available. I'm like, get him in here. And that doctor

• 51:34Speaker 00

  I'll probably lose it. Because I respect and admire him so much. Dr. Michael Lawton.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  My God.

• 51:47Mayim Bialik?

  He was a kid.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  Was a kid.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Went in and gave me, first they gave me a, this, what is now a very common technique. They go in through your femoral artery and go up. And they missed it because they had not examined me and they did not know that I had had breast tumors and was laying on one side and recovering. So they were gonna send me home a few days later because, as I say, my now ex-husband kept telling them I was faking it. And my best friend finally threw what she calls a full Shirley MacLaine and said, "You are giving her another test. No one is faking being in a fucking coma."

• 52:35Speaker 00

  And she convinced them to give another test when they discovered that my right vertebral artery was hanging by a thread. And I had hemorrhaged into my whole subarachnoid pool, which was my face, my head, my neck, and my spine.

• 52:54Jonathan Cohen?

  Just for people who don't understand, explain what's happening. Blood is going basically-

• 53:00Mayim Bialik?

  Where it ought not go. There's like a casing over your brain that keeps everything in, like a giant Ziploc baggie that's sealed real tight. But if it comes loose, everything that's in there can go into all the spaces. And people don't think about that, that like all the fluid in your brain and all those blood vessels, they then connect. Like, that's why we're connected through your spine. And like, yeah, like all these Venus spaces, that's where everything goes.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. And there is nothing more painful than blood going where it's not supposed to be. That's what happens when you get a bruise. Well, this is like having a bruise in your brain, in your face, in your neck, in your spine. And it takes years, not days, years for that to recover. And the, I'll explain later what that's like. But, so, what was supposed to be like a 45-minute check ended up being a nine-hour brain surgery,

• 54:02Speaker 00

  where they put 22 coils to replace my vertebral artery. So to explain what that means, when Christopher Reeves ruptured his two vertebral arteries, he became a paraplegic. So losing one is incredibly serious and incredibly dangerous and is incredibly life-threatening. And to recover from that meant I had to recover my motor skills, reading, writing, talking, walking, thinking, remembering.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  And prior to that, I had a photographic memory, meaning I would go to work and I didn't have to learn my lines. I would just look at them and go, "Great, great, great." And they'd go, "Oh, we're gonna change that speech." "How much of it?" "All of it." "Okay, no biggie." It was a nothing. Like, learning in school was like, I wrote everybody's term paper in college. I mean, I had a business going in college writing term papers. It was like a breeze, sorry to say. I had to learn to learn.

• 55:20Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. How many years ago was this?

• 55:22Speaker 00

  This is now 25 years ago.

• 55:25Mayim Bialik?

  So this has been the work of your life?

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yes, because I had to learn to learn. Then I had to see, am I gonna recover my photo memory? And that took a lot of years because I was terrified. Then I lived in terror and I lived in paranoia because I didn't know what happened to me.

• 55:47Mayim Bialik?

  And it all happened at the same chaotic time that so many things were falling apart.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Right, and my bank account got drained. And I got blamed for things I didn't do and hadn't ever done. And I got marked as a person who wasn't the kind of person I was. And then I lost my, I was the biggest movie star on the fucking planet. And then suddenly, no one wanted to hire me. And I got named as things I wasn't. And my child, my baby, got taken from me. And all these things happened that were just indescribable. And I wasn't capable of explaining what happened to me because it happened behind me.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  It happened from the back of me. And I couldn't say what happened, even though my now ex-husband had been taken to court and was in anger management and had attacked a person at his job. And no one would believe me when I said I felt unsafe.

• 56:55Mayim Bialik?

  Why don't people believe-

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Women?

• 56:57Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, you said it, yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  Why don't people ever believe women? Because this planet is a very peculiar planet. And why it's set up this way, I'm not really certain. But I think it's set up this way for a while,

• 57:18Speaker 00

  for us to learn about these things and for us to come to an understanding about certain things. And for us to understand that everyone on this planet is a woman or the children of women. And that we must certainly come to understand the reverence of that and the reverence for life and the reverence for Mother Earth.

• 57:44Mayim Bialik?

  I'm gonna push a little harder because, like I said, you occupy such a special place for so many women in particular. I'd like to give you the opportunity to kind of speak to, what is it also about powerful, beautiful women who kind of know how to own their shit that opens you up also to a different kind of scrutiny?

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Well, I think, first of all, we need to understand that all women are powerful and all women are beautiful. And that the garden is not just made of white roses. Like, let's get a clue. Like, there's peonies and daisies and cacti and all kinds of things, and they're all beautiful. Like, to imagine that only a white rose is beautiful is to understand that those are the most delicate flowers that die very quickly. And let's get a clue here of what beauty really is.

• 58:43Mayim Bialik?

  Well said.

• 58:44Speaker 00

  And if you don't understand the vast breadth of beauty, you really have really poor vision.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Just for starters, like, get a clue about what's beautiful. And I think that's the really principal first step. And power, what is power? So power is the grasp of truth. That's power. Power is not hoarding.

• 59:20Speaker 00

  And a hoarder is a person that has too many things in their home that they don't need. Even if they're shiny and spectacular stuff, it's still hoarding.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  It's still an illness.

• 59:41Mayim Bialik?

  Your book talks about, you know, kind of this opportunity to live again. And I wonder if, you know, kind of tying back to this experience that you had with these orbs, right? With some presence. What do you feel kind of has guided you or protected you in this phase of your life, your career? You're an incredible artist. You know, you've turned so much of your attention and intelligence towards a different kind of artistic expression. What has been guiding you? Like, is it spiritual? Is it whatever protection these orbs were giving you?

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  Something really interesting happened to me at one point. I mean, I grew up in this way where, you know, when you live in the country, everybody works together. If you don't help each other, you don't survive, right? That's just basic common sense. But also, there was a period during the-

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  George Bush Jr. administration where I had said that I didn't think he should be president. That I thought that he should have been president of the tennis club. That I thought that he was a very amiable, really kind-hearted, good-spirited, good-natured, really good guy. But I didn't see him as president of the United States. And that I thought that this was really that his mother was really, really driven and his family was really, really driven. And I didn't think it was really appropriate.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  And I got an incredible, what I did, and it was because I was on the cover of The Rolling Stone. And I didn't understand my position, the power of my position, and the bounce back that would happen.

• 1:01:45Mayim Bialik?

  I thought you were such a badass.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  Every one of my airline tickets had all those five stars. Me and everyone that worked for me, my taxes were, you know, we had our taxes rolled. Every time I flew, they strip searched me. They strip searched my babies, my strollers, my security person. I mean, it was just violent. We were taken in, we had to take off our clothes, everything happened. It was just, and it went on for the whole time that, during this thing. And then I didn't, I suddenly didn't, couldn't get any jobs in my industry. All of this stuff happened and I didn't understand.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  I didn't realize that like I had used my power in a way that felt disrespectful to the office of the president. And I didn't know, I was very naive to the fact that I had suddenly become considered powerful and that I had used my power in a way that felt disrespectful to the office of the president. I didn't understand that and I didn't understand what had happened.

• 1:02:55Mayim Bialik?

  This was a very different time in entertainment history. Like, there was no social media, you know, like, the only way people were hearing things was read, like, it was very different.

• 1:03:04Speaker 00

  I had no, I was clueless. And this was the same time that they were selling Willie Nelson's, all his pharma equipment and he was getting in all this, it was all happening to him. And I went to him and I said, "What's going on? Like, I just, like, I don't come from this. Like, I'm not from here. And I just, I'm clueless about why this is happening." And I really, I just said what I believed. I didn't mean to be, you know, overstepping. I really, I wasn't trying to be unkind to him.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  I really, I don't even think he really wanted to be president, to be honest. You know what I mean? I, I really was just being, what I thought, which is one of my probably best and worst qualities, is that I just have an inability to lie. Right? And so, and Willie said to me, "Look..."

• 1:04:08Mayim Bialik?

  I like the thought of you and Willie Nelson in a conversation that's funny to me.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  He's a wonderful human being and he's been a great friend to me.

• 1:04:13Mayim Bialik?

  That's so sweet.

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  And I said to him, "Look, I don't know what to do." And he said, "Sharon, you have a vocation. He has a job. Whether if it's four years or eight years, eventually he's not going to have a job. But you will always have a vocation. So why don't you figure out what you would like to do with your vocation while you're not being an actor? Do something that really matters to you. And we will both do things that really matter to us. It's not going to change who you are. Know who you are and do what you are. And when he doesn't have a job anymore, you'll see if you get to be an actor."

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  And it was beautiful. It was a beautiful part of my life. And, you know, he's been a marvelous friend to me.

• 1:05:10Mayim Bialik?

  Do you want to hear a Willie Nelson joke that I have?

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:13Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know what your sense of humor is like. What's the last thing you want to hear if you're blowing Willie Nelson?

• 1:05:18Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:05:19Mayim Bialik?

  "I'm not Willie Nelson."

• 1:05:24Mayim Bialik?

  That's a really wicked joke.

• 1:05:28Mayim Bialik?

  That's a good joke, right?

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  You know, I was in Hawaii for, I don't know, maybe like my 40th birthday. And I had just done Catwoman. And I had bleached my hair white for that part. And it was literally just breaking off my head. It was just, it was-

• 1:05:49Mayim Bialik?

  From the peroxide.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  It was just done. And then, so we wrapped and I literally took packing scissors and just cut it all off. Because I had, it was done. I had, like, my hair was done. And I cut it off like, like, half an inch long, all over my head, because I had to grow my hair back out. It was just awful. And I went, flew to Hawaii to meet my family. And my boyfriend was supposed to come and we were going to have a party there. And my good friend lives in Hawaii, this guy named Shep Gordon. And I was, and we were going to have this party over at my friend's house. And my boyfriend called me and said that he was breaking up with me because he couldn't date anybody that had hair this short.

• 1:06:34Mayim Bialik?

  Stop it. Stop.

• 1:06:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:06:38Mayim Bialik?

  Who was it, a famous boyfriend?

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  No. It was this nimwit. And so, I went over to Shep's house and Willie and Shep were sitting on the floor together, talking. And I walked in and they looked at me and they went, "What's wrong?" And I said, "Well, my boyfriend just broke up with me because he said he couldn't date anyone with hair this short." And Willie leaned back and picked up his guitar and started playing this breakup song. And I was like, "Oh, fuck you." And he started following me around the house.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  And he, all day long and all night long, he and his son, who's now a huge star, they played every breakup song they ever knew. Until it became just hilarious. And Mick Fleetwood and his wife came over. And he started drumming on the coffee table. And my parents came over and my family came and all these friends came over. And it became the best party I've ever been to in my entire life. Listening to every breakup song Willie Nelson ever knew.

• 1:07:54Mayim Bialik?

  With your short hair.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  With my short, white, fuzzy hair. It was fantastic.

• 1:08:01Mayim Bialik?

  I don't want to kind of like leave this notion of, you know, this experience you had.

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  With my visitors?

• 1:08:10Mayim Bialik?

  Your visitors. Well, I'm curious, you know, if you felt the presence of anything else that gives you strength, that gives you kind of, you know, even the medications that you mentioned, you know, I'm guessing that they were ones that sometimes were told, like, "You're going to be on this forever. This is just how your brain works and you need them." I'm curious what strength you draw on, you know? Does that experience go with you?

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  I just say, you know, I am prepared to accept my purpose and my destiny. I am prepared. Like, maybe I was afraid before, but I'm not afraid. And I think I'm not afraid because my kids are adults. When they were younger, when I was raising all these kids that I continued to adopt, even in my very crippled state, I raised them and, and I raised them, and I always tried to make them understand that I was a fragile person. And so, they had to be strong and independent children.

• 1:09:17Speaker 00

  Because what if something happened to me? You know? And they have really great godfathers who know that they're, they're second. They're the ones that would be up. And they bought a house with rooms for my kids. And so, they know, these two wonderful guys, Neil and Kevin Gatz, they know they're, they're the ones. And they've been amazing with my kids. I mean, my kids, they bought a house that's sort of on the way to the school my kids went to. And my kids would stop and have breakfast with them on the way to school. And they've been spectacular godparents to my children.

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  And, you know, my kids really, you know, knew there was a backup plan. And, you know, my kids are great. My kids are great kids.

• 1:10:18Mayim Bialik?

  We're going to hit pause here. There is so much more in part two of our conversation with Sharon Stone. Why does she like playing dark characters? And what does the embodiment of those kinds of people bring to her life?

• 1:10:33Jonathan Cohen?

  She also describes how we can all tune into higher consciousness, the fact that there are more than three dimensions, and what is actually happening when we're shaking hands? Are we exchanging energy?

• 1:10:47Mayim Bialik?

  We also talk more about her acting career and is she a difficult actress and is she a difficult partner? Make sure to head over to Substack for bonus content from this episode and so much more. BealikBreakdown.substack.com. Also, check out Sharon in the latest season of Euphoria on HBO Max, as well as in the movie In Memoriam, which recently premiered at Tribeca, in which she co-stars with Marc Maron. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.